Louisiana chef 1 of 2 men killed in California plane crash

A prominent Louisiana chef killed in a California plane crash during a hunting trip is being remembered by friends and family in his local community as an ambassador of Cajun culture.

Lionel Robin’s legacy includes his crawfish etouffee being featured on the Food Network and serving as Tabasco hot sauce’s official hospitality chef.

Robin, 70, was one of two men killed Monday when a small plane crashed into a pond in a rural area of Northern California’s Colusa County. The county sheriff’s office said deputies found the bodies of Robin and his friend, 66-year-old Jeffrey Webber of Healdsburg, California, among the wreckage. The office said a dog that had also been on the plane was seriously injured.

The plane crashed roughly 70 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of Sacramento, and the cause is under investigation by county and federal officials.

“The Robin name will never die in the town of Henderson,” Collette said. “I can promise you that.”

Robin owned and operated Robin’s Restaurant in Henderson for about four decades. The Cecilia native more recently shared his culinary expertise with an international audience through Tabasco, the Avery Island-based pepper sauce.

Robin’s etouffee was featured in a 2011 episode of Food Network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.” He told The Daily Advertiser then that “(It’s) not only a compliment to me but the whole area we live in as well.” He also canned the dish and distributed it across the country.

“There’s not many people who could sell crawfish etouffee in a can and it be delicious, but he did just that,” Dona Richard of the St. Martin Parish Tourist Commission said.